An Uncomfortably Open Book [original fiction]

Below is the first chapter of a novella I'm writing this fall. I haven't given up on To Coin a War; expect to see more of that this winter. But in the meantime, I'm experimenting with various devices to embed the type of pedantic, preachy economic (or political) sermons Chekhov warned against including in a story. Hoping to avoid the type of aesthetic problems inherent in Francisco's “Money Speech,” for those of you familiar with Ayn Rand.

The text of the book (the verbose, opinionated narrator of this story) is lifted from my series on Sustainability for Kids, published here on Steemit last January. But the information contained in that series is only one dimension of a larger story I'd like to tell about sustainable systems, both relational and economic. Please let me know your thoughts and reactions in the comments!

The first name on her library card is Greta. Succinct, two syllables.

I forget the last name.

She cradles me in her hand as another reader walks by, turning his shoulders toward his search. They're all hunting words, that tweezer of a phrase to gingerly extract the burrs and splinters of their modern lives. Weak flesh. Everyone looking for answers as the AC pets their downy skin and the carpet is rhythmically crushed by their seeking soles.

At her touch, I fall open.

Two eyes, waving falsies, invade my bared splay. She turns my pages, scans my words, drinking my ink like a brandy. She spreads me flat with the palm of her right hand and stares down at my naked participles.

Is she curious? Could she care about me? Does she wonder what I might have to say? I read her back like a label on mayonnaise: casually.

Her fingers tap my spine, still deciding. So I begin the self sell, drawing her pupils back to my lines. I tell her the story of sustainability in an age of consumerism. My page one is actually a page nine, but she doesn't notice. It's greed; her eyes read in a rush, both pupils jumping back to the left, again and again. Repeating. Hasty. Missing, but repeating in their haste. Is she hungry, drooling to feast on an idea? Or maybe just running late.

How do we define sustainability? She's trying to form an internal answer, but hoping, as they all do, that there's more to my story than the bits she already knows. Generally, Greta, sustainability just means living in ways we can easily maintain. Look, we can't power-shop all year long; that's not sustainable for our bank accounts. And we can't power-consume natural resources forever. That's not sustainable, either. Her pupils dilate, pinpointing her agreement onto the word “natural.”

In the clear, wet skin covering her eyeball I see a reflection of breeze-swayed palm trees, a future afternoon projected onto the cinema screen of her neocortex. Combining with the right angles of these ambient bookshelves is a scent of sunscreen, the sound of wind. She's looking for a good beach read, and here am I, the romance novel of a woman dedicated to higher thought and perhaps a bit plagued by guilt.

Because guilt is a greater motivation than curiosity.

Modern society is drowning in the opposite of sustainability: consumerism. It's not that we need to police what people buy. Everyone should be free to consume what they want. But it's good to understand why our society tends to consume unsustainably, and to explore some things we can do voluntarily to change our own behavior.

She's growing bored now, but what can I do? We're all burdened with these expository passages. Flip forward a few pages, I want to tell her. But she's linear, this one. Doesn't break the rules, not a step out of order. Unlikely she would ever cheat the ending of a novel. She earns her knowledge through mental suffering, reading each word of the droning miasma that is a non-fiction Introduction.

I long to offer her the single red rose of an adverb.

A big hint that our culture is leaning -- heavily -- toward consumerism is the fact that the Container Store, clutter coaches, and the show “Hoarders” exist. At last, she's smiling! Owning too much stuff can be a problem for us these days, and that isn't sustainable, either: there's only so much room in our homes to store it all. But “happiness through consumption” seems to be our modern-day motto, and this is a motto we've learned.

Our first lesson came at home: the demand we all heard growing up to “clean your plate.” Eating is another word for “consuming,” and we consume in the economy when we buy something. Many distinctions can be made about consumption in the field of economics but basically, consumption is the opposite of production. It uses up, it depletes, destroys, preventing others from accessing the resource for themselves... in a word, it consumes.

Shopping, then, is sort of like eating.

She stops, looking back at the automated world visible through the library's tinted window. The shops are all there, lined up across the street, just as I've been telling her.

But she's not shopping now, is she? No, she's borrowing books, an act beautifully bereft of destroying consumption. A library book like me is read once or twice and returned for other hungry eyes to consume again and again. Devouring the book doesn't destroy it... well, not enough so that anyone could tell. The resource remains.

I will survive her ravening bite and she knows it.

While it’s true that human beings must consume to survive, it’s this constant nudge to consume first and foremost that’s threatening sustainability.

Greta flips back to my contents and runs a puffy fingertip down the column of italicized page numbers. A decent length, it would seem.

Slammed shut, I'm added to the pile. I've been chosen.